Two presidents, two traumatic crises, two half-terms judged by what didn't happen instead of what did. The two presidents are George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who respectively prevented further terrorist attacks on American soil and a repeat of the Great Depression.

And that's where the similarities end. When the nation is attacked or at war, citizens rally around the president. When the economy is terrible, they desert the president - even if, as last week's exit polls show, less than a quarter blame him for the mess.

Democrats should be on notice: They're on a short leash with the American people. Two years in charge of the White House and Congress, and boom, what have you done for us lately? Not enough. You're outta here, in one-third the time voters gave Bush and the GOP to control Washington and work their will on the country.

Are Democrats on a shorter leash than Republicans? Is there a trust gap between the parties? Are we now a center-right country, or a country that swerves back and forth, or a country merely going through the "hate" phase of its love-hate relationship with government?

It sure seems sometimes that voters don't give Democrats the benefit of the doubt. You can enumerate any number of mistakes made by Democrats and Obama, but none to date compare with invading Iraq for reasons that didn't pan out, and then mismanaging the war in a spectacular and tragic manner. Yet Bush was re-elected in 2004, at the height of the violence and chaos, and so was the GOP Congress.

Bush himself was the fourth Republican elected to two terms as president since Franklin Roosevelt. Democrats have had exactly one: Bill Clinton. And while voters gave four more years to Republican Ronald Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush, they denied that extension to Democrat Al Gore, Clinton's vice president (the asterisk being that Gore won a half million more votes even as he lost the electoral vote).

Some non-partisan analysts say there are too few presidents to draw the conclusion that Democrats get the short end. Sometimes history turns on personalities, tactics or historical circumstances. The Bushes were aided by weak Democratic opponents in 1988 and 2004. Gore ran in a nation fatigued by the Clinton scandals and impeachment. Jimmy Carter faced serious problems including a recession, U.S. hostages in Iran and a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

As for all those two-term GOP presidents, Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of The Rothenberg Political Report, said they were elected and re-elected to balance out a Congress held by Democrats for 40 years until Republicans took over in 1995. He also said the creation of Social Security and Medicare - high-profile Democratic successes that expanded government during the Roosevelt and Johnson administrations -- gave rise to an "anti-government counterweight."

That was exacerbated in the 1970s. James Thurber, head of American University's Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, said the Watergate scandal created a trust-in-government gap that persists to this day. "Mainly trust has been going down. That affects whoever is in the majority," he said.

It is a particular disadvantage to be the party more identified with big or activist government. Ronald Reagan increased federal spending and federal workers. George W. Bush added a new Medicare benefit to cover prescription drugs and begged Congress to pass the $700 billion bank bailout. Clinton, the Democrat, declared that "the era of big government is over," shrank the federal workforce and balanced the federal budget. Even so, in the public mind, Democrats are firmly entrenched as the party of big government.

That image has been reinforced mightily during Obama's first two years. His term to date has been marked by expansions of government to cope with the economic crisis he inherited (the bank and auto bailouts, the stimulus package and tighter regulation of Wall Street), as well as new government roles in health care and the student loan program that Obama had promised in his campaign. It would be shocking, really, if all of that had not given rise to the tea party movement and escalating resistance to federal spending and regulation.

Democratic strategist Matt Bennett, a vice president of the centrist think tank Third Way, said it may be hard to document a historical pattern of built-in bias against Democrats. But at the moment, he said, "it feels like there is a structural barrier to Democrats. It feels right now like we're pushing a rock up a hill all the time with much of the electorate."

It's a fact-based feeling. The Republican base in 2010 "is twice as big as ours," Bennett said. His group examined voter ideology in the national exit poll and found that liberals were 20 percent of the electorate in 2006 and 2010. Conservatives, meanwhile, went from 32 percent in 2006 to 41 percent in 2010. Furthermore, while Democrats held on to 55 percent of moderates, that was worse than their 60 percent in 2006.

The sharpest swing came among independents, who voted 56 percent to 38 percent for Republican House candidates. That was almost completely reversed from 2006, when Democratic House candidates carried independents 57 percent to 39 percent, and considerably worse than Obama's performance with independents in 2008 (he won them 52 percent to 44 percent).

Maybe voters were more patient or maybe just more traumatized, but in 2002, 14 months after the 9/11 attacks, Bush gained eight seats in the House. Obama has lost more than 60 after facing a crisis that was arguably just as grave - the seemingly imminent collapse of the U.S. banking system and economy.

Each of those events was profoundly frightening in its way. The unforgettable horror of the attacks and the shock of suddenly realizing our oceans could no longer keep us safe. Then, seven years later, the daily announcements of mass layoffs, the stomach-lurching disappearance of savings and home values or even homes themselves, the questions (how bad can it get?) and the specter of another terrible new normal taking hold. The country's future seemed balanced on a razor's edge.

Bush benefitted from Americans uniting against the common enemy of al Qaeda. Obama not only has been punished for the tanked economy, he and his party and even a few Republicans have been punished for taking the bold steps that staved off catastrophe. Democrats and Obama have a shot at electoral redemption in 2012. If that doesn't work, their best option is to take a tip from Bush and leave judgments to history. By then, he has said, "We'll all be dead."

The latest edition of the Enquirer says Hagerty had a "secret July 7 meeting" with Portland Police Bureau investigators, who also interviewed "several others."

He's been up, down, out and then in, denied the presidency but redeemed . . . by Hollywood, where he'd never before been beloved. Perhaps most improbably, after being mocked throughout his life as too beige, too careful, and all too maddeningly perfect, the guy who as a kid on a field trip approached his teacher and inquired, "Sir, is it the time to be rowdy now?" whose likeness in his high school yearbook literally has him up on a pedestal -- "People who have no weaknesses are terrible" the caption reads -- has been recast quite late in the run as a brute from the first. People are complicated, of course, so I'm not sure why we're so set on it being all one or the other. Or why the new rendering is no more nuanced than the old stick drawing of Al Gore, insufferable Eagle Scout.

For years, he was belittled for being so annoyingly right all the time; Gail Sheehy once criticized him for having no discernable body fat. "He tries too hard to be perfect,'' she wrote in "Flawless, But Never Quite Loved,'' a 2000 opinion piece in The New York Times. "Perfection is a serious flaw for a modern politician. Mr. Gore has suffered from it all his life." Maureen Dowd pegged him as a "goody-goody . . . locked into the Good Son Role," "the Tin Man: immobile, rusting, decent," and "so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct he's practically lactating."

But that was always a caricature; Gore was also sarcastic, droll, and fully capable of playing hard ball. A journalistic colleague I had no reason to doubt told anyone who would listen that Vice President Al Gore had tried to stick his tongue down her throat out of nowhere at a New Year's Eve party in the mid-'90s, when all she'd been expecting was a friendly peck.

Now that he's been accused of behaving not just badly but criminally with a massage therapist summoned to his Portland, Oregon, hotel room in the fall of 2006 -- just before his comeback -- the all-new take on the boring old Gorester is that he was a boor in Bubba's league all along: "If the massage therapist's story is true,'' despite Gore's denial, writes Ann Althouse, "we are looking at the same problem we saw with Clinton. . . . What makes a man treat a woman like that? Generally, I think it's because he's done things like that before, many times, and gotten away with it. We're talking about an older man, with a big reputation and a lot to lose. Why would he proceed in such a crude fashion? I would guess that his sensibilities have numbed over the years, as women acceded to his moves. The moves became less and less elaborate.''

My friend and former Slate colleague Emily Yoffe, whose work I am on the record as liking quite a lot, imagined in print that "He had to have long ago concluded there are different rules for the people whose little, wasteful lives are destroying the planet and the person whose mission it is to save it." She continued:

While the rest of us are supposed to fret about our choice of light bulb, Gore must believe it's actually more efficient for him to have a string of mansions where he can rejuvenate himself for the burdens he must carry. And since he's rich he can take care of any personal indulgences with the modern indulgence of carbon offsets. So, there he was at the end of another long day, meeting draining people, lecturing them on how to live, and he needed to blow off some tension. It's understandable he doesn't want to bed groupies -- they could want things like phone calls and attention. And he's not going to cross the legal line by going to a pro. So the late-night massage is perfect. The masseuse is a woman whom you pay well to come to your room and rub your naked body, and if some special adductor work happens, all the better.

Which doesn't jibe at all with the Gore I got to know pretty well while doing a series of long biographical pieces about him for The New York Times in 2000. My husband, Washington Post reporter Bill Turque, wrote a Gore biography, "Inventing Al Gore," but one thing that's not in his book that he learned in the course of reporting it is that Gore told one of his closest friends that he was not only a virgin when he met Tipper at his senior prom, but that in all the years since, he had never had sex with another woman.

What we wondered most after the 2000 recount was how in God's name Gore managed to put one foot in front of the other until the march started to make some kind of sense again. Is the answer in Molly Hagerty's 67-page statement to the Portland police? Much of it does have the sickening ring of truth, which doesn't make it true. And some of it doesn't add up, just like in real life.

Sometimes I think bank robbers might get more respect than reporters do. (And yes, that's even if you count poor Rip Torn, who got so drunk he broke into a bank he seems to have mistaken for his house, then curled up and fell asleep there.) I mean, do even thieves have to listen to long, error-filled screeds about "the robbers" at their very own dinner tables, delivered by their very own family and friends? On one particularly galling occasion, as a member of a profession held in perhaps even lower esteem stood in my living room drinking my wine and holding forth on how "you can't trust the media," I only barely suppressed the urge to blurt, "See you and raise you on the trust issues, there, Padre."

With left and right united in jihad and much of our industry battling PTSD, I am loath to indulge in the kind of press bashing we in the press used to take such pride in. Yet our handling of the Gore sex allegation does perplex me, especially because I'm not sure I'm right.

When Politics Daily reporter Annie Groer called to relay what she'd read in the initial "nothing here, folks" statement issued by the Portland police, Annie and I both had the same lofty and perhaps mistaken reaction: Oh, ugh.

If the police hadn't taken the charge seriously -- and they'd done everything but scribble dollar-signs in the margins -- then why should we? Since the police had issued a statement, however, we would do a short, just-the-facts item and basta. The Times, the Post, and most every other outlet did likewise, as conservatives complained that we were ignoring the story out of ideological loyalty (to the guy we tore to shreds during the 2000 campaign?) and liberals cried that we were over-covering it, eager as ever to do anything for a buck.

Salon served up "Three Reasons to Doubt the Al Gore Sex Assault Story," while The Washington Times ran with the dubious claim that "the Al Gore cheating scandal . . . came as no surprise to some in Washington.'' (Rush Limbaugh stuck to the original Gore-is-a-bore script, however, joking, "How do you massage a wooden object?")

Only, when are we going to acknowledge that people we agree with on public policy issues do the wrong thing sometimes -- and vice versa? That our wild swings in judging public figures as heroes and then monsters are kid stuff? (I wish I could argue that such black-and-white characterizations are a major reason for public erosion of trust in the Fourth Estate, but a quick look at what sells rules that out.) Flawed as we in "the media" are, most of us do continue to run away from both R and D sex scandals, despite the limitless appetite of . . . you, dear readers, for anything that smells like dirty laundry.

At Politics Daily, we do so much journalism that I couldn't be prouder of -- yet the most popular stories in the month before the Gore sex investigation was reopened by Portland police included news about Al and Tipper Gore's divorce, news about their eldest daughter's separation, and non-news about a Gore affair that didn't even happen. For a boring guy, he certainly has held our interest. And whatever comes next for one of the most complicated people I've ever known, when we sketch him or any other figure in the news as a cartoon, it is we who are being obstinately simple.


Follow Melinda Henneberger on Twitter.

When he opened his White House bid in Carthage, Tenn., Al Gore proclaimed, "I will take my own values of faith and family to the presidency -- to build an America that is not only better off, but better."

It was mid-June 1999. Just four months earlier, the Senate had ended the sordid, year-long Monica Lewinsky scandal by acquitting President Clinton of charges stemming from the affair. No wonder Gore felt called on to remind people about the difference between his morals and Clinton's. I wrote back then for USA Today that he alluded a half dozen times to values and character and the need to set examples. "I say to every parent in America, it is our own lives we must master if we are to have the moral authority to guide our children," Gore told a friendly hometown crowd that day.

The message was unmistakable, especially since Gore had set the table the night before by acknowledging for the first time that the Lewinsky affair had been "upsetting." He condemned Clinton's behavior but said he had "remained steadfast" for several reasons, one of them that "I keep my commitments, to my wife and to my family and to my job."

Gore endured a Shakespearean fate in 2000, in part because he never figured out how to handle Clinton's character issues. Through a spokesman, Gore has denied the sexual assault charges in the graphic complaint masseuse Molly Hagerty filed through her lawyer in 2006 with the Portland, Ore., police. Still, it is a tragic irony that he is now in the tabloid territory so familiar to Clinton.

Back in 1996, Gore's worst character problem appeared to be his ill-advised attendance at a fundraiser held at a Buddhist Temple (Democrats collected $55,000 in illegal contributions; Gore said he didn't know the lunch was a fundraiser). In 1999 and 2000, his character came under attack again in a false media narrative about Gore's alleged lack of credibility and tendency to exaggerate.

It started with widespread ridicule over his claim to have "invented" the Internet, except that he never said that. What he really told CNN was that while in Congress, "I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Which was pretty much true, as even Newt Gingrich said.

There was Al Gore and "Love Story" (did he say he and Tipper were the models for the hero and heroine? Not exactly -- he said that's what author Erich Segal told Nashville reporters). There was Al Gore and Love Canal (did he really say he discovered Love Canal? No, he said he had "found" it when he was looking for places to highlight at a hearing on hazardous waste sites. "That was the one that started it all," he said -- "that" as in the hearing, "all" as in the march to anti-pollution laws and programs like Superfund).

In that campaign, to his great detriment and, many would sorrowfully contend, to the great detriment of the nation, Gore never mastered the art of explaining or clarifying himself. Maybe he was too used to being considered a Boy Scout and treated like one. In recent years, with his work on global warming, with the Nobel Peace Prize and the star turn in an Academy Award-winning documentary, he recaptured some of that wonky Boy Scout aura.

But the seemingly perfect life, including the 40-year marriage, is now shattered. Gore is not only separated from Tipper, he has landed in the company of John Edwards in the pages of the National Enquirer. Portland police now say they were wrong not to investigate Hagerty's claims, and are reopening their investigation. Gore will have to hope his lawyers do a better job explaining and clarifying than he did on his own behalf a decade ago.

At WomanUp, we've opined about Al and Tipper Gore's separation and allegations he had a fling with the Hollywood mogul, Laurie David, who bankrolled his documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth." We also speculated about the Gore daughter's divorce on the heels of her parents'.
Now we are compelled to delve into the most recent news about Al Gore, and it's a tawdry tale of his allegedly attempting to force himself on a masseuse in a hotel room in Portland, Ore. My colleague Bonnie Goldstein in e-mail today commented she finds it "unimaginable that Al Gore, the former senator from Tennessee and erstwhile next president of the US, attacked a red-haired hotel health spa worker he hired to give him a therapeutic massage while in Oregon on a business trip."
Whatever client event transpired, the masseuse billed the hotel her normal rate and later, months later, in fact, filed a police complaint, a document which this week the Portland police department confirmed to the The National Enquirer they have. Police declined to bring charges, citing insufficient evidence. Apparently, the unnamed redhead (all we know about her is the color of her hair) would have gone public but the Enquirer refused to pay her and her lawyer $1 million. The fortress of tabloid journalism doesn't say what, or if, it paid for the police report.

As Bonnie imagined the scenario, "The phone call from the senior police desk officer to ask Mr. Gore, 'Uhm, remember when you stayed at the Hotel Lucia that time?' was probably directed personally to the former vice president without any discussion with Tipper, but in my head I hear her say as he hung up: 'Of course I know you didn't attack her. I've been married to you for 40 years. You are a man of rectitude and honor and you should have been president. But I'm just wondering, why were you getting your stomach massaged, honey?'"

With all due respect to Bonnie, to me there are some aspects in the Enquirer account that have the ring of truth, like the part about the masseuse trying to distract Gore with chocolates. Gore's appetite is legendary - one of the reasons given for his hyperactive performance in one of the 2000 presidential debates is that he wolfed down several high-performance protein bars before going on stage. His weight gain in recent years has been obvious -- and a contrast to the disciplined persona he had projected earlier in his career.
The masseuse's civil lawsuit is likely going nowhere, but it turns Gore back into a joke, a cruel fate for a man who had worked so hard to get beyond the ridicule heaped on him during the 2000 campaign.

On my run this morning, a fellow jogger, a 60-ish baby boomer like Gore, said it was nice to know Gore had these urges, because he had come across in the past so monk-like and weirdly repressed. Then, noting that Gore had requested an abdominal massage, he mused, "I wonder where the abdomen begins and ends . . ." I told him I wondered if other women Gore may or may not have had an encounter with will begin revealing themselves. "Like Tiger?" my fellow runner laughed.

I doubt Gore's alleged late-blooming sexual aggression will manifest itself with a tally comparable to Tiger Woods, but one Enquirer account mentioned there were others.

Either way, the respectability that eluded Gore for so long in his political life, and that he had finally achieved with his global warming crusade -- is now seriously eroded, replaced by punch lines about abdominal massages on the late-night shows. And other than what we guess at and speculate based on their long public marriage, who knows where Tipper fits into all of this? We can only imagine.

In 1939, the director George Cukor gave us the campy classic "The Women." Based on the novel by Claire Booth Luce, it was the glossy saga of a sweet wife whose husband is snatched away by his shrew of a mistress -- that is, at least, until the wife grows her own talons and snatches him back. (Rent it! You will finally get the joke the next time your gay best friend extends his nails and intones, "Jungle Red!")